Saturday, November 5, 2011

ENGLAND slipped to a narrow defeat against Georgia in the opening match of their EHF Challenge Trophy campaign in Ireland on Friday.

England went into the game as underdogs, but right from the start surprised their opponents and the crowd by leading for much of the first half.

Indeed after 25 minutes the Georgian's had just managed to scrape a slender 9-8 lead. It was only some unfortunate missed chances by England that meant the half time score was 13:10 in favour of the Georgia.

The second half started a bit nervously for England with some more missed chances allowing the Georgians to extend their lead to 6. England didn't let this rile them however and managed to fight back and matched the Georgians for much of the half bringing the scores back to within five minutes to go.

Last ditch efforts were the order of the day to try and get a result from the game. Unfortunately this was to be to no avail and the Georgians eventually managed to regain their six-goal advantage to win the game.

So, whilst this was a loss for the English it was by no means a defeat. A few heads were certainly turned by a strong English performance.